Several days later, at the entrance to Long Corridor Valley.
"We're out of the valley!"
"Hahaha..."
"Unbelievable—we've lived another day!"
"..."
The small merchant caravan of twenty carts threw up their arms and cheered, every face alight with the joy of having survived a calamity.
Brown Bear Ridge, like a nightmare, had left indelible terror and fear in everyone in the caravan.
But... they were lucky.
Once they passed the entrance of Long Corridor Valley, they had left behind the most dangerous stretch of the trade route from Northern Liang to Great Jing and entered the territory of the Beiliang Kingdom.
For merchants, a single round trip between Northern Liang and Great Jing was enough to cover an ordinary family's food and living expenses for a year.
Yet that one trip each year was a matter of life and death.
The caravan's twenty-odd carts were still the same twenty-odd carts. Not one was missing.
At the very rear of the convoy, that incomparably mysterious Sackcloth Youth still lay in the cart.
It seemed as though nothing had happened. Only the missing people still spoke of the dangers of the trade route.
Behind every person who failed to return was a grieving family.
But for those who had survived, it no longer mattered.
Peddlers and porters traveled the world, where countless demons, devils, and human butchers blocked the road. If you ran into them, that was fate.
Understand your own fate, respect the fate of others, and rejoice in every day you remained alive.
After selling their goods, some would linger in taverns and pleasure houses, then set off south again after squandering their remaining money over a few days.
Others would pinch every penny and wait months, or even a year, before setting out again.
Old Cartmaster and Little Bean